European Peace Institute / News

Since the signing of the Revitalized Agreement to Resolve the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) in September 2018, South Sudan has seen a sustained reduction in political violence. However, progress on Chapter I of the agreement, which calls for the establishment of a Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity, has largely stalled, and the agreement does not address the structural drivers of localized insecurity.

In this context, the International Peace Institute (IPI), the Stimson Center, and Security Council Report organized a workshop on January 30, 2020, to discuss the mandate and political strategy of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). This workshop offered a platform for member states, UN actors, and outside experts to share their assessment of the situation in the country. The discussion was intended to help the Security Council make informed decisions with respect to the strategic orientation, prioritization, and sequencing of the mission’s mandate and actions on the ground. The workshop focused on the current political and security dynamics in South Sudan, including developments in the formation of a transitional government, the status of the peace process, and the root drivers of conflict. Participants also examined how to adapt UNMISS’s current mandate to strengthen the mission and help the UN achieve its objectives over the coming year.

Workshop participants agreed that UNMISS’s mandate remains relevant to the current political and security environment. At the same time, they highlighted opportunities to ensure that the mandate’s language provides the mission with the flexibility to support the R-ARCSS, or respond to its reversal, and to adjust its approach to the protection of civilians.

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“Policing is about interaction, and if you are looking for lasting sustainable peace, then interaction, engagement, conversation, dialogue are very important. It is policing that enables this political process,” said Boniface Rutikanga, a former United Nations peacekeeper and now police adviser to the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the UN.

Mr. Rutikanga was speaking to a February 13th IPI policy forum, cosponsored by the Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN, launching the IPI policy paper Protection through Policing: The Protective Role of UN Police in Peace Operations by Charles T. Hunt. The paper examines the role of UN Police (UNPOL) in the protection of civilians (POC) and identifies UNPOL’s contributions and comparative advantages, as well as the challenges it faces.

Dr. Hunt explained that while police have contributed to protection of civilians since the emergence of the POC mandate, they had more recently been thrust into the frontlines of some of protection efforts in places like Darfur, Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, often in densely populated environments. Despite the fact that police provide “unique capabilities and expertise,” and that it is “arguably ingrained in this idea that police’s inherent function is to serve and protect,” missions have “generally undervalued or overlooked some of these protective roles of police, often relying more on militarized approaches to protection,” he said. UNPOL often appear as an afterthought, and tend to remain in the shadow of military components.

Listing some of the comparative advantages that UNPOL officers have over their military or civilian counterparts, Dr. Hunt said they were more skilled at tackling threats when violence does not involve the sustained use of military weaponry, better placed to play a deterrent role, and well positioned to partner with a range of others to protect civilians and establish trust with national law enforcement agencies and the local populations, giving them some ownership over a sustainable protective environment.

Among the challenges he cited were a “lack of clarity in the scope of the mandate,” especially in contexts where UNPOL can use all necessary means to protect civilians but does not have an executive mandate, and poor coordination where the line between criminal and military threats becomes “blurry.” He also mentioned the risks of technical approaches to capacity-building which can perpetuate, rather than transform, politicized security sectors, and instances where the UN mission gets “trapped” in partnerships with the host governments that end up “exposing and imperiling” civilians.

Dr. Hunt said that despite the “significant” contributions that police made to protecting civilians, there are still perennial issues of capabilities, capacity and tools, including the “insufficient quantity, quality, and flexibility of UNPOL assets and resources.” He added, “POC is still not really in the bloodstream of police on the ground at all levels. Police can do a lot more to leverage their comparative advantages, strengthen their contribution, and help UNPOL meet the growing recommendations for their role.” Dr. Hunt recommended that UNPOL have a clearer voice in decision-making processes, and adequate monitoring and evaluation systems to inform planning and gauge their impact, among other recommendations proposed in his paper.

Namie Di Razza, Senior Fellow at IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations and head of IPI’s POC Program, noted that one of the program’s objectives was to “clarify the roles and responsibilities of the different actors involved in the implementation of POC and for a better use of tailored approaches, including armed and unarmed strategies.” Adding that police should be “fully integrated” in protection strategies, she observed that “in times of peace, the police are the main actor handling public security and public order, and their core function is often defined by the mantra ‘to serve and protect.’” She commended Dr. Hunt’s paper for highlighting ways to “strengthen people-centered and community-oriented approaches in peacekeeping and alternative options to heavy military presences for future peace operations models.”

Shaowen Yang, Deputy Police Adviser, Police Division, UN Department of Peace Operations, noted that there are nearly 8,700 UNPOL personnel in nine peacekeeping operations and seven special political missions (SPMs) contributing support to member states in realizing “effective, efficient, representative, responsive, and accountable police service” that serve the population.

He pointed out that in most countries, police are regarded as a “service” rather than a “force,” and that “policing must be entrusted to civil servants” obligated to respect and protect civilian lives, and operating within a legal framework based on the rule of law.” In his remarks, he highlighted the vision of UNPOL, seeking to build a police that is “modern, agile, flexible, transparent, accountable… people-centered, right-based.” UNPOL therefore acts as a promoter of international human rights norms in the host country, and pursues its mandate in compliance with the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy (HRDDP).

Rania Dagash, Head of the Policy and Best Practices Service, Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training, UN Department of Peace Operations, emphasized that since the first POC UN Security Council Resolution twenty years ago, there has been considerable growth for police in POC. “We highlight not just the criticality of the police component in POC but emphasize the community orientation of policing, the patrolling of our vulnerable communities… It is undervalued, it is under tapped, and often overlooked.” Echoing the words of Mr. Rutikanga, she said, “Police contribute to dialogue and engagement, which is fundamentally a political role” as they help promote and advocate protection priorities with national and local stakeholders.

As examples of their effectiveness, Ms. Dagash said that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali, UN police had prevented turmoil between host state police and civilians in election contexts, in South Sudan UN police had prevented outbreaks of violence among the 200,000 internally displaced people there, and in Gao in Northern Mali, UNPOL had played a major role in enabling cooperation between the local population and local leaders. “UNPOL created networks for information sharing that allowed the local population and national authority to make decisions together,” she said. She also warned against substituting uniformed soldiers with police. “Police and military are suited for different functions. Police should not be seen as a cheaper or easier tool for military function.”

In remarks preceding the discussion, Stefano Stefanile, Deputy Permanent Representative of Italy to the UN, stressed the central importance of UNPOL to peace operations. “UN policing is an instrumental factor that establishes the link between peacekeeping and peacebuilding,” he said. “UN policing is at the core of the spirit and philosophy of the A4P (Action for Peacekeeping) reform proposed by the Secretary-General. UNPOL serves to restore mutual trust among communities to favor reconciliation.”

Ms. Di Razza moderated the discussion.

Since first deployed in 1960, United Nations police (UNPOL) have consistently been present in UN missions and have become increasingly important to achieving mission objectives. Since 1999, these objectives have often included the protection of civilians (POC), especially in places like the Central African Republic, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and South Sudan. But despite its rise in prominence, the protective role of UNPOL is generally undervalued and regularly overlooked, and missions have tended to overly rely on militarized approaches to POC.

This report examines the roles and responsibilities of UNPOL regarding POC. It outlines UNPOL’s contributions to POC and perceived comparative advantages, using examples of their role as compeller, deterrent, partner, and enabler. It also identifies and draws lessons from challenges to police protection efforts, including ambiguous mandates, policies, and guidance; poor coordination; problematic partnerships; and deficits in capabilities, capacities, and tools.

Drawing on these lessons from past and current deployments, the report proposes recommendations for how member states, the Security Council, the UN Secretariat, and field missions can improve UNPOL’s efforts to protect civilians going forward. These recommendations include:

• Clarifying the role of UN police in POC through mandates, policies, guidance, and training to align the expectations of UN peace operations, the Secretariat, and member states for what UNPOL are expected to do;
• Involving all UN police in POC and giving them a voice in decision making and planning to infuse whole-of-mission POC efforts with policing perspectives and empower UNPOL to act more readily;
• Enhancing partnerships between UN police, host states, and other mission components to enable more responsive, better coordinated, and more comprehensive approaches to POC; and
• Providing more appropriate and more flexible capabilities, capacities, and tools to address critical capabilities gaps and adapt existing resources to better meet UNPOL’s latent potential for POC.

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“Diplomacy is about the alignment of interests, and politics is the pursuit of interests, often in contradiction to other parties’ interests,” said Alan Doss, the veteran leader of multiple United Nations peacekeeping missions. “I found that missions were taking the diplomacy route, but those in power were on political pursuits.”

Mr. Doss, now the President of the Kofi Annan Foundation, was speaking at a February 10th Speaker Series discussion of his new book A Peacekeeper in Africa: Learning from UN Interventions in Other People’s Wars. The book is a project of IPI published by Lynne Rienner Press.

Mr. Doss’s narrative focuses on the four African countries where he was in the leadership of UN peacekeeping operations—Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It provides a firsthand account of those missions and how they illustrated both the frustrating limitations of peacekeeping operations but also their important contributions to supplanting conflict with peace.

Mr. Doss said he was impelled to write the book by four considerations. The first was his desire to share his experience in UN peacekeeping to show “how these things happen, how we bring together people from all over the world who have no direct interest in the country, not even necessarily neighbors, but they intervene in other people’s wars.”

Secondly, he said, he wanted to “humanize peacekeeping. We tend to forget what peacekeepers face every day in the field, and much of the commentary is very negative because of the failures of peacekeeping. Every day, I saw people going out and doing a decent good job often at great risk to themselves and often in terrible conditions to try and make a difference.”

The third was to correct misperceptions of the continent where he worked for decades. “Much of what is written about Africa is wrong, ahistorical, and does not contextualize conflicts in centuries of history and cultural circumstances.” The fourth was the deteriorating world situation and the danger it posed to peacekeeping. “The international environment has not improved, in fact, it is becoming more difficult, and these unique instruments of intervention that the UN has developed, not only in recent years, but over decades, are becoming marginalized. We should be very careful not to allow peace operations, including peacekeeping, to fall into disrepair.”

Mr. Doss’s comment on balancing diplomacy and politics came in answer to a question from Jake Sherman, head of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations. Mr. Sherman asked Mr. Doss how he managed to work with people he himself called “violent psychopaths” and governments he identified as “abusive, repressive, and unresponsive.” Mr. Doss responded, “You do have to deal with people who are not exactly examples of human compassion, but they’re there, and you have to deal with them. But I found that those people are often great communicators. They have mastered the simple message.”

He said there is an inevitable tension between host governments and the UN, and the clashing perspectives get exacerbated with time, often to the UN’s detriment. “Governments that allow peacekeeping missions into their countries don’t exactly expect them to come in and criticize their violations of human rights. It’s one thing to criticize a militia, but another to challenge the national government.” As a result, he said, “over time missions lose influence. Sovereignty reasserts itself as governments become more confident, they exercise more control, and they are less likely to cooperate.”

Reflecting on recurrent institutional problems he had experienced over his four decades of working for the UN, Mr. Doss observed, “Peace agreements do not create peace. It’s what comes after.” At that point, he said, there becomes an accretion of overlapping mandates that can end up nullifying the original purpose. “If you get missions where one task after another is tacked on, it can undermine the effectiveness of the delivery of mandates. We keep adding things and adding things, without necessarily considering what the capabilities are on the ground.”  He recommended that “every now and then, it’s important to take a look at mandates and ask what aspects of it are realistic.”

He confessed to having become “overwhelmed” by creating and reworking strategies over the years. “We became a strategy factory,” he said. “We should move away from strategy and instead look at the key elements of a mandate and say, ‘What can we do?’ and I think we will often find contradictions between what we are asked to do and what we can do. We were strategizing; we were not actually doing.”

Asked his views about how the UN had handled reports of sexual exploitation, he said, “Quite frankly, we’ve had a mixed record, and sadly that tends to outweigh anything else we do, often in the headlines. But it’s a sad fact, and we have to be responsible, and I really do believe that the number one job of the SRSGs (Special Representatives of the Secretary-General) is to deal with that because otherwise you’re crippled in all kinds of ways.” He added that the UN can discipline its civilians more effectively than its uniformed staff because the Secretary-General has direct authority over them. “I’m afraid that troop-contributing countries have not always helped us on this issue.” Zero tolerance was the only remedy, he said, because “if you don’t try for zero tolerance, you’ll get much worse. We have to keep after it because if we don’t, inexorably we will slide back.”

In closing remarks, Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayeh, Sr., the Permanent Representative of Liberia to the UN, cited the success of the UN in his country where the UNMIL peacekeeping mission left in 2018 after 15 years of helping restore peace to a country that had been racked by two devastating civil wars between 1989 and 2003. “Liberia is a country where the UN had a very successful stint,” he said. “Nonetheless, we must not stagnate in the way we keep the peace.”

The discussion was moderated by Mr. Sherman.

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Sanctions can end up hindering humanitarian assistance and the provision of life-saving medical care in armed conflict, and forestalling that outcome was the subject of a January 28th policy forum at IPI, co-hosted with the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations.

The discussion centered on a new IPI report, Making Sanctions Smarter: Safeguarding Humanitarian Action, by former IPI Senior Policy Analyst Alice Debarre, which explored how sanctions regimes can negatively impact humanitarian aid, using case studies from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. The report also offered concrete recommendations for how to safeguard humanitarian action.

According to the report, among the unintended consequences of sanctions regimes are that:

• Humanitarian organizations are put on sanctions lists;
• Resources needed to apply for exemptions from sanctions regimes create a drain on the effective delivery of aid;
• Banks sometimes restrict or refuse to provide service to humanitarian actors to reduce risk;
• Importing basic goods like concrete are restricted;
• New inhibiting restrictions are put into clauses in donor agreements; and
• Humanitarian actors can be fined or prosecuted.

These obstacles can have a chilling effect, where humanitarian actors err on the side of caution and do less than legally required to avoid the possibility of violating sanctions.

“We need to ensure that sanctions are not an impediment to humanitarian action,” said Jürgen Schulz, Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN. “It is important to prevent and in any event minimize the potential negative effect on humanitarian action to make sure that impartial medical and humanitarian action is preserved, and that humanitarian and medical personnel are not prosecuted for activities conducted in accordance with International Humanitarian Law.”

To do so, Mr. Schulz said, exemptions for humanitarian action in sanctions regimes play “an important role” in guaranteeing that humanitarian action is safeguarded. “We need to use [exemptions] more often and more effectively than we do today,” he argued. “We believe only when sanctions and counterterrorism experts engage in meaningful dialogue with humanitarian actors [can] we achieve real, lasting solutions.”

Sue Eckert, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Energy, Economics, & Security Program, Center for a New American Security, noted that this was not a new issue, but that there was an increasing body of evidence on the scope of these challenges. Ms. Eckert commented on how de-risking by financial institutions undermines humanitarian aid, and cited a 2017 report that said two thirds of United States nonprofit organizations faced financial access problems.

Financial access “literally can mean life and death,” explained Ms. Eckert. “If the fuel runs out, they’re not able to get more fuel, the generator shuts down, a hospital doesn’t operate, people don’t get food.” Furthermore, she said, when financial institutions cut off support to nonprofits, these organizations often resort to using cash, which is “extremely risky” for individuals and organizations that must trace their funds. But, she added, with the threat of billions of dollars of fees for violations, it’s natural that financial institutions are going to look at these responsibilities warily.

Chris Harland, Deputy Permanent Observer of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the UN in New York, recommended ways for sanctions measures to be revised as they come up for renewal at the Security Council. He suggested monitoring impact and considering exemptions for UN actors and partners. He also recommended reviewing the obligations of International Humanitarian Law in the sanctions process to make sure that “impartial humanitarian action must be possible even in situations where sanctions regimes are in place,” adding that, “Undertaking our protection activities, ensuring food delivery, clean water, and medicine to those in the greatest need must still be possible.” He noted the contradiction that while “certain sanctions measures outside counterterrorism frameworks are often designed to bring about a better humanitarian situation for individuals in each context, unfortunately, however, we have paradoxically seen sanctions systems which also negatively impact principled humanitarian action.”

Complying with sanctions regimes has meant going through “lengthy, costly, at times unclear administration processes,” according to Julien Piacibello, Humanitarian Affairs Officer, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “We have an obligation to ensure that the grants and the aid go to the people who need it and do not serve any other purpose than responding to need,” he said.

Of the 60 nonprofits interviewed by ODI for a 2018 study on the impact of de-risking in Syria, Mr. Piacibello noted, “Only six of them said that they had not modified programming in order to prioritize less contentious areas and projects. So in practice this means that all the others have admitted to changing the priorities of their programming to limit the risk of diversion, but in a way that does not necessarily prioritize the most urgent, the most acute needs.”

Mr. Piacibello suggested that the UN Security Council provide clarity on how the sanctions regimes should apply to the humanitarian sector and humanitarian activities, including by having implementation guidelines so that states have clear guidelines. “State implementation is what will ultimately make a difference. You need to have Security Council action, but you need to have states following suit. States can adopt exceptions; they can also make sure that principled humanitarian action is not criminalized and that unintentional cases of aid diversion do not give way to crippling penalties. They may provide for the possibility of licenses, but also make the obtention of licenses accessible and swift, and work with other states to ensure the mutual recognition of specific licenses—that will go a long way, I think, in facilitating humanitarian action.”

Justifying humanitarian action requires a reasonable share of risk, Mr. Piacibello noted, but as Ms. Eckert stated, “These are people’s lives that we’re talking about—this has a real impact.”

In his closing remarks as moderator and presentor of the findings of the report on behalf of its author, Ms. Debarre, IPI Vice President Adam Lupel said there is ample evidence that there are incredible challenges that no single actor can grapple with on their own, making this a multi-stakeholder issue requiring dialogue and commitment. “There really is a shared interest in the effective implementation of sanctions regimes while at the same time enabling and facilitating and supporting humanitarian action, and I think that’s something that there is a real collective interest in and a view to improve in the future.”

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A number of European countries have deployed to United Nations missions in Africa after years of absence from the continent, and on January 21st IPI hosted a policy forum to discuss this renewed engagement and launch a policy paper on the subject. Co-sponsored by IPI, the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN, and the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, the event featured experts including the authors of the paper, Non-resident IPI Senior Adviser Arthur Boutellis, and Major General (ret.) Michael Beary, former Head of Mission and Force Commander, UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Gen. Beary introduced the subject by outlining several of the key reasons why countries like Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden— as well as Canada—had reengaged. Northern Africa and the Sahel are strategically important for Europe, he said, peacekeeping contributions are weighed heavily in bids for seats on the Security Council, and after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) drawdown in Afghanistan, NATO and the European Union (EU) members need to participate in international operations to keep their capabilities operational and funded. Of note, he added, is that individual countries pursued reengagement in different ways. “We would emphasize in our report that the return is not a monolithic bloc, and reasons for return are based on different national interests, military traditions, and historical backgrounds.”

Among the challenges for these troop-contributing countries (TCCs), he singled out the “trust deficit” among mission staff—he described it as “who controls what?­”—and compliance with the UN’s rigorous “10-1-2” medical support rule which calls for enhanced first aid within ten minutes, enhanced field care within one hour, and damage-control surgery and acute medicine within two hours.  Meeting those standards was “vital” to maintaining public support, he explained.

Going forward, Gen. Beary said that the UN planning process should allow for more input from the European TCCs and that European forces should be prepared for longer deployments that extend beyond one year. Alluding to another goal that needed to be addressed urgently, he said, “We also must meaningfully engage uniformed females in all segments of UN peacekeeping.”

Mr. Boutellis, in comments made via video, said that the European TCCs added great value to UN peacekeeping through their top-tier technology, adaptive vehicles, and the financial support they attract. “The presence of European TCCs helps keep the attention of Brussels and of the Security Council,” (on these peacekeeping missions) he added. On the down side, he noted that there were problems associated with the Europeans not accepting UN command and control, which created “trust and confidence concerns… Also, sometimes the European TCCs want to be treated differently,” he remarked. “In some missions, they refuse to paint their vehicles or aircraft white.” They may also have their own camps, dividing them away from the rest of the mission, which creates further security concerns.

He pointed out that the part of the paper that dealt with how the other TCCs viewed the European TCCs was reassuringly entitled “not so bad after all.” For example, he said, they valued the air coverage and the training capabilities that the Europeans brought and “understand the imperative to satisfy the political concerns of their capitals.” He stressed, however, that the UN had to “engage European capitals more strategically, be up front about mission expectations, and keep working to gain the trust of the European TCCs.”

Col. Richard Gray, Counsellor, Military Adviser of the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the UN, said his country had absented itself from UN peacekeeping for eight years and that “this interlude from peacekeeping had some consequences, including a loss of capabilities for how to deploy within UN peacekeeping. We had to relearn, and thankfully, the UN system helped with that.” He asserted that its experience with NATO in Afghanistan did furnish Sweden with some fresh capabilities that helped when it participated in the UN peacekeeping operation in Mali. He credited requests from Canada and EU countries with leading to the development of better Medevac (medical evacuation) policies. “Capacity building of TCCs goes both ways,” he said, “and all TCCs can learn from each other.”

Adam Smith, Team Leader, Strategic Force Generation and Capabilities Planning Cell, UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO), said he took heart from the title of the report Sharing the Burden: Lessons from the European Return to Multidimensional Peacekeeping. “‘Sharing the burden’ encapsulates what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re engaging the Europeans because we realize that peacekeeping has changed, and Europeans have high capabilities which need to keep up with changing peacekeeping contexts… Much work remains to be done to educate European TCCs and Canada about what UN peacekeeping is and how it has changed.”

Madalene O’Donnell, Team Leader for Partnerships, Divisions of Policy, Evaluation, and Training, UNDPO/DPET listed five objectives that guide her office’s efforts to facilitate member states’ contributions to UN peace operations:

• Encouraging member states to establish informal coordination among themselves and to create a mechanism to enable collective action;
• Positioning these dialogues within the broader conversation about the state of the multilateral system;
• Increasing the participation of women;
• Conducting greater joint diplomacy so as to “tell a better story” about UN peacekeeping; and
• Using the “new EU mechanisms and priorities to garner better EU participation in peacekeeping.”

Closing remarks were offered by Col. Richard Decombe, Military Adviser, Permanent Mission of France to the UN, and Brian Flynn, Deputy Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN.

Col. Decombe said the characteristics essential to good multilateral peacekeeping were “credibility” to attract support and funding, “solidarity” to enable European countries to work in concert with other countries, and “complementarity.” Elaborating on the last point, he said, “This is not a question of competition or making useless comparisons but making the most of how the TCCs complement each other.”  

Ambassador Flynn noted that Ireland had an “unbroken record” of 60 years of participating in UN peacekeeping. “How we can support our European partners to contribute to UN peacekeeping is something that we prioritize,” he said. “We recognize that the burden of peacekeeping has for some time not been shared evenly, and we must all be ready to step up and play our role, and we have to look at how we can help and encourage other countries to do so.”

The discussion was moderated by Jake Sherman, Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations.

Since 2013, after years of near absence from the continent, a number of European countries, along with Canada, have again deployed to UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. The European presence in UN peacekeeping in Africa is now nearly at its largest since the mid-1990s. These countries provide much-needed high-end capabilities, as well as political and financial capital, to UN peacekeeping operations. Nonetheless, securing and sustaining European contributions to these types of peacekeeping operations remains an uphill battle for the UN.

This paper draws lessons from this renewed engagement by European countries and Canada, both from their point of view, as well as from that of the UN Secretariat, UN field missions, and other troop contributors. It aims to explore how these bodies and other countries can best work together in a collective endeavor to improve UN peacekeeping’s efficiency and effectiveness. Toward this end, the paper recommends a number of actions to the UN Secretariat:

• Build peacekeeping operations around first-class medical systems;
• Focus on improving processes for casualty evacuation;
• Strengthen the UN’s capacity to foster partnerships among troop-contributing countries;
• Engage Europe strategically and politically;
• Be flexible and make European contributors (and others) feel included in planning;
• Continue educating European contributors about UN peacekeeping;
• Do not limit engagement with European contributors to high-end capabilities;
• Ensure European contributors adhere to UN standards; and
• Encourage European contributors to commit to longer deployments.

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For more than seven decades, UN peacekeeping operations have fulfilled an essential role in managing international crises. Alan Doss has spent a decade at the highest levels of UN peacekeeping in Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At a moment when peacekeeping faces enormous challenges, both politically in the Security Council and operationally on the ground, it is worth reflecting on the successes and failures of the past, and on the insights they may offer for UN peace operations today.

Looking back on his years with the UN, Doss provides a firsthand account of the operations he led. The frustrations he recounts are valuable both as history and for what they tell us about the limits of peacekeeping. The successes and satisfactions he relays are valuable for their reminder of the UN’s ability to rise above its limitations and the important contribution it makes to peace.

A Peacekeeper in Africa is a joint project of the International Peace Institute and Lynne Rienner Press.

See more about the book from Lynne Rienner Press.

Contents

• Foreword—Terje Rød-Larsen
• A Journey in Peacekeeping

THINGS FALL APART: WEST AFRICAN WARS

• Sierra Leone: The Search for Peace
• Côte d’Ivoire: The War of Succession
• Liberia: From War to Peace

WARS WITHOUT WINNERS: PEACEKEEPING IN THE CONGO

• Into the Cauldron: Congo Past and Present
• Crisis Without End: The Kivu Wars
• The Contagion of Conflict: Other Places, Other Wars
• Pursuing Peace: Stabilization, Peacebuilding, and Transition

OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE PROMISE OF PEACE

• Great Expectations: Intervention and Its Conceits
• Pipe Dreams and Possibilities: Navigating Pathways to Peace

MOVING FORWARD: PEACEKEEPING TODAY AND TOMORROW

• A Job Like No Other: Leading Peacekeeping Missions
• Facing the Future: Actions for Peace

In recent decades, sanctions have increasingly been used as a foreign policy tool. The UN Security Council has imposed a total of fourteen sanctions regimes alongside those imposed autonomously by the EU, the US, and other countries. Despite efforts to institute more targeted sanctions regimes, these regimes continue to impede or prevent the provision of humanitarian assistance and protection.

This policy paper focuses on the impact of sanctions regimes in four countries: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. It aims to assist the Security Council, relevant UN organs, UN member states, humanitarian actors, and other stakeholders in ensuring that humanitarian activities are safeguarded in contexts in which sanctions regimes apply. While there are no straightforward solutions, the paper offers several ways forward:

• Including language that safeguards humanitarian activities in sanctions regimes;
• Raising awareness and promoting multi-stakeholder dialogue;
• Conducting better, more systematic monitoring of and reporting on the impact of sanctions on humanitarian activities;
• Developing more and improved guidance on the scope of sanctions regimes; and
• Improving risk management and risk sharing.

This paper is accompanied by an issue brief that provides further detail on the types of impact sanctions can have on humanitarian action.

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“Africa will not continue to accept, given its weight in the world today, that it has no permanent seat in the Security Council with everything it entails as an advantage to have that seat,” Marcel Amon-Tanoh, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Côte d’Ivoire, told an IPI Global Leader Series event on December 17th.

Mr. Amon-Tanoh predicted a resumption of the debate in the General Assembly that had lapsed over the past decade over how to expand the Security Council and make its membership more representative of the United Nations membership as a whole. The 15-member Council is widely perceived as reflecting the world of 1945 when it was created rather than the realities of today where countries like Nigeria and South Africa, along with Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Germany, and Turkey have gained stature relative to the existing five permanent seat holders, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“I think everybody will agree along with our countries that the UN Security Council as it exists today does not reflect the world we live in,” Mr. Amon-Tanoh said. “It is being discussed in the Security Council but not in the General Assembly, and we must try to make sure that the debate in the General Assembly that has lost energy can once again regain a dynamic quality so that the debate that existed at the time of [former Secretary-General] Kofi Annan can exist today.”

Noting that there was now talk of Africa seeking from three to five such permanent seats, he said, “Africa should have the ambition of having permanent seats on the Council regardless of number, and it is unjust or even hypocritical not to consider the African continent, which is both envied for its natural wealth and resources, which is the target of much interest by all the great powers because Africa is a great continent which has its means through sheer force of resources to determine the future of humanity, and must be present in negotiations. Countries should take an initiative in order to relaunch debate on the Security Council in the interest of the whole world.”

The subject arose in the course of comments by Mr. Amon-Tanoh on the occasion of his country’s concluding its two-year term as an elected member of the Council—a particularly auspicious development since only two years ago the UN was ending its peacekeeping mission (UNOCI) in the country, and now the country  has become a contributor of UN peacekeeping troops.

This swift passage from being a country that had experienced two civil wars between 2002 and 2011 and was on the agenda of the Security Council for 13 years to being an engaged member of the body was discussed by the second speaker at the event, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Under-Secretary General of the UN Department of Peace Operations.

“It’s very meaningful and quite impressive to see the Côte d’Ivoire having gone from being a country whose status was an item on the agenda of the peacekeeping operations to being an active contributor to the UN Security Council’s work,” he said. “It enriched the Security Council and our operations to have the contributions of Côte d’Ivoire and generally of countries that have directly experienced all the complexities and outcomes of peacekeeping. UNOCI, having been one of the early multidimensional peacekeeping missions and having gone through so many situations in the country, was unprecedented, and I think this informed the way Côte d’Ivoire took part in the Security Council.”

Mr. Lacroix said he viewed the ten elected members of the Council as essential “bridge builders” between the disputatious permanent members and other member states on the Council. “The Security Council is divided now, characterized by the division of permanent members,” he said. “As the Secretariat, we expect a lot of the role of bridge builders from the elected members. On top of that, we have the experience of legitimacy like Côte d’Ivoire that adds to the capacity of those members and that can benefit—we’ve seen it in many situations—the Security Council, the UN, and can help overcome difficulties and divisions that characterize our organization today.”

IPI Vice President Adam Lupel noted that during its just completed two years on the Council, Cte d’Ivoire hosted formal debates on post-conflict reconstruction and peace, security, and stability, and on cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional organizations, reflecting critical thematic issues on the Council’s agenda. The country also had been a penholder for the situation in Guinea-Bissau and a co-penholder for the UN Office of West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS). He recalled that Côte d’Ivoire’s single Council presidency took place a year ago, in December 2018.

Mr. Amon-Tanoh said the country had been guided in its Council work by three main priorities:

• Sharing its experience acquired in emerging from crisis and consolidating peace.
• Contributing to the strengthening of international peace and security, including through support for UN peacekeeping activities.
• Amplifying the voice of the African Union on current security and humanitarian issues that inhibit development of the continent.

“In this regard,” he said, “be it the conflict in Libya, the security and humanitarian situations in the Lake Chad basin and the Sahel, as well as issues relating to the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Darfur, Somalia, Burundi, or the Horn of Africa, my country has always stressed the need for reinforced cooperation between the United Nations and the African Union in matters of peace and security.“

Beyond that, he said, Côte d’Ivoire had paid “particular attention” to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and the plight of the Rohingyas in Myanmar “for whose solutions it has always advocated dialogue.”

In the cases of Syria and Yemen, he said, Côte d’Ivoire “focused on the political processes for ending the crisis and the urgent management of humanitarian situations” and “insisted on the need for lasting ceasefires in these hotbeds of tension, in order to open up the political spaces essential for the establishment of a constructive dialogue.” In North Korea, it championed “fruitful dialogue,” and in Iran, it counseled a return to the Security Council-endorsed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement. He highlighted the fact that during its presidency, Côte d’Ivoire hosted two high level meetings, one which he chaired, on the need for collaboration between regional and sub-regional organizations and the UN system, and the other, chaired by the country’s president, Alassane Ouattara, on economic reconstruction in the consolidation of peace.

In conclusion, Mr. Amon-Tanoh said he hoped his country would be remembered for “making its voice heard, a voice at the service of dialogue, peace, and fraternity between peoples, the voice of a country that has recently hosted a United Nations peacekeeping mission, and which, through its exemplary crisis resolution and peacebuilding strategies, has returned to peace, stability, and prosperity.”

The discussion was moderated by IPI Vice President Adam Lupel.

Live coverage of the event in French can be found on the IPI Francophone page.

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A popular revolution in Sudan eight months ago ended the 30-year rule of dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir, abruptly transforming the country’s governance institutions and beginning the reshaping of its social contract. It occurred at a time when the African Union (AU) and the United Nations were deep in preparations for the reconfiguration and eventual withdrawal of the hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) from Sudan’s Darfur region.

IPI Policy Analyst Daniel Forti told an IPI audience that UNAMID’s transition is “the most complex mission transition the UN has ever undertaken.” Mr. Forti was speaking at a December 16th policy forum, held in partnership with the Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN, to discuss the upcoming stages of the mission’s reconfiguration and to launch an IPI policy paper that he authored called Navigating Crisis and Opportunity: The Peacekeeping Transition in Darfur.

Charlotte Larbuisson, Political Affairs Officer, UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, said that “with the events of the past year, the peacekeeping transition is itself taking place in a transition – in Sudan’s democratic transition. We started this transition from peacekeeping in Darfur in a very different environment. We have had to adapt to changing circumstances and shift the trajectory of the peacekeeping. The outcome will probably look quite different than we were envisioning at the beginning of the transition.”

Suggesting that the crisis might actually amount to an opportunity, she said, “The events of 2019 have impacted the substance and direction of the transition and have resulted in a new enabling political environment in Darfur, testing the flexibility of the transition and its ability to adapt. The transition in Darfur is taking place in a different political environment so we have altered our political engagement.”

Framing the peacekeeping transition within recent developments throughout Sudan, Mr. Forti concluded that “UNAMID’s experience has thoroughly tested many of the UN’s emerging principles regarding mission transitions.” Three of these are that: “Transitions are inherently political and are premised on how the UN reconfigures its engagements with a host country; transitions depend, in part, on how well the UN can achieve system-wide integration on the ground and strengthen coherence with a range of national counterparts and international actors; transitions need to be flexible and adaptable, especially in dynamic political environments where the host country re-assumes ownership over a range of security, governance, and development initiatives.”

Gunnar Berkemeier, Peacekeeping Coordinator, Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN, said he was “optimistic” about the possibilities. “First and foremost, there is buy-in from the government of Sudan. We have a chance to make this a mission that the Sudanese government and people really want.”

At the same time, he said, while the change had been dramatic, one had to be aware of what had not changed. “It is completely fair to say that there is a ‘new Sudan’, but there are also old issues in Darfur that have been drivers of division in the country that remain to be addressed. We have to take into account the duality of supporting the political process but also addressing the remaining peacekeeping and peacebuilding needs. We have to be ambitious with the mandate because in this moment, we have the opportunity to make real headway on these issues. There must be a great deal of flexibility built into the mandate to deal with its outcome and progress.”

Jürgen Schulz, Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the UN, introduced the conversation by saying, “We have seen many important developments and decisions in Sudan in the last year, and many Sudanese representatives have called it ‘a new Sudan’, so now we must ask ourselves, ‘What do we do with the peacekeeping mission?’” He noted that the Security Council would soon be taking up the matter of how to reconfigure UNAMID “when we will ask ourselves, ‘What should be the structure? The mandate? The geographical extent?’ There are no easy answers or fixes.”

Looking forward, Mr. Forti enumerated five priorities that should inform the next stages of the peacekeeping transition:

• Strengthening the engagement with the UN Security Council and AU Political and Security Council.
• Ensuring the primacy of any follow-on presence’s political mandate.
• Reinforcing joint planning efforts to strengthen national ownership over the transition process, scale up peacebuilding work and identify fresh complementary opportunities for new actors.
• Integrating human rights and protection into all areas of work.
• Sustaining international attention and financial support to make funding more “predictable and streamlined.”

Natalie Palmer, Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the UN, spoke of earlier divisions over the peacekeeping transition within the Security Council.  “We did not have a sustainable peace agreement in place, many concerns had not been addressed, and for the UK, the priority was to have a flexible and responsible withdrawal,” she said. “There were two camps in the Security Council – those who were very happy to see the mission leave, and do it quickly, and those who were wary of leaving without a peace agreement. Financial pressures also contributed to a rapid drawdown.”

She said that while the current configuration of UNAMID is “probably still not the most appropriate tool to address the challenges in Darfur, we have a new opportunity to support a new government and peace process.” The drawdown had been paused until March of 2020, she said, and “there are still major protection concerns, especially for women and children, and a continued need for humanitarian support and aid.”

Husni Mustafa, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of Sudan to the UN, praised the AU and UN collaboration that produced the hybrid peacekeeping force in 2007. “This unique partnership is a success story for us,” he said. “The cooperation between the AU and the UN is ongoing, especially between the AU Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council. We must focus on national ownership.”

Ms. Larbuisson said she was hopeful for the success of the twin transitions underway.  “The current transitions in Darfur and Sudan are an opportunity to ensure that the support we provide is in line with the new phase that the country finds itself in,” she said. “We need to seize it to get the peacekeeping transition right and help the new authorities build peace.”

Jake Sherman, Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, moderated the discussion.

In the face of evolving security dynamics and geopolitical pressures, the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council initiated the withdrawal of the AU-UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in 2017. This transition is a uniquely complex undertaking—all the more so following Sudan’s political revolution in April 2019, which required the UN and AU to rapidly adapt their support to the country. This complex environment is putting all the principles of peacekeeping transitions to the test.

This paper examines the dynamics of this peacekeeping transition in Darfur, focusing on UNAMID’s drawdown and reconfiguration, as well as the UN’s efforts to build the capacity of other actors to sustain peace following the mission’s exit. It highlights five broad priorities for this transition going forward:

• Strengthening political engagement between the UN Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council;
• Translating the AU-UN joint political strategy into an effective follow-on presence;
• Reinforcing the transition concept;
• Integrating human rights and protection in all areas of work; and
• Sustaining international attention and financial support.

This paper is part of a larger IPI project on UN transitions and is complemented by similar case studies on UN peacekeeping transitions in Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, and Liberia, as well as a paper exploring experiences and lessons from these three transitions.

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On November 21st, IPI and the Normandy Region co-hosted a policy forum on the importance of inclusion and human rights in building lasting, durable, and sustained peace, with a particular emphasis on the importance of women’s participation in peace processes and international mediation.

The Normandy Region launched the Normandy for Peace Initiative in 2017, and it organizes a forum for peace in Normandy, France, each year. Last year’s second annual forum attracted 250 speakers from 50 different countries, and organizers are planning the third for June 3rd, 4th and 5th of this year just before the celebrations of the 76th  anniversary of the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy.

François-Xavier Priollaud, Vice-President of the Normandy Region, said that the best way to honor the generation that liberated Europe from the Nazis 75 years ago was to build a durable, inclusive peace that enshrined human rights. “Sustainable peace is not just peace through peace treaties,” he said. “It’s the concept of democracy, it’s the vision of multilateralism, and we need to make sure that the sustainable solutions are always coming out of dialogue.”

He said that Normandy for Peace was based on “four pillars. We have a campus for youth learning to solve and diffuse conflict. We have an annual award for liberty. There is also the Normandy for Peace Library, which is a resources center online. The fourth area is dedicated to art, science, and culture. These pillars of peace put men and women at the heart of the solution.”

Hervé Morin, President of the Normandy Region and former French Defense Minister, singled out climate change and inequality as drivers of conflict. “When you talk about sustainable peace, there is one topic we only talk about in part, which is inequality—in nations, within mankind, firstly between nations.” He argued that the current large migrations from the global south were prompted by inequality, “but tomorrow they will be triggered by the issue of climate change. The hope is that one day we’ll stop with nice statements, declarations, and statements of principles and give official development aid.” As for the persisting inequality of women, he declared, “Whenever women play a key role in society, societies are wealthier and healthier. Whenever women play a real role, peace wins and war loses.”

Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, Permanent Representative of Ghana to the United Nations, acknowledged the gains that Mr. Morin cited but lamented, “With all these potential benefits, one wonders why the situation is as it is today, being that there are fewer women mediators, there are fewer women in peacekeeping or in negotiating peace agreements. Peace agreements fail to make reference to women or address concerns such as gender balance.”

She referenced her own involvement in the African Women Leaders Network and said there needed to be many more such networks, all communicating with one another and building partnerships with local groups acting to prevent conflict and otherwise promote the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. “Meaningful participation of women in peace is not just about increasing their numbers in processes,” she said. “We must deal with real qualitative representation. This is to ensure that their rights, needs, and experiences are properly reflected in reconstruction processes. Studies have shown that inclusion of women in peace processes is critical.”

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor cited instances around the world in places like Yemen, Syria, Libya, Mali, and Sudan where women were actively involved in advocating for political change and negotiating for life-saving humanitarian access yet not included in the peacemaking process.  “In the Central African Republic, despite sexual violence being fundamental to the violence that country continues to experience, and despite the mobilization of women leaders at every level, women were virtually excluded from recent peace talks and were—as in so many other cases—brought into the discussion only at the tail end,” she said.  In other examples, Libyan women were let into peace talks only “through sheer resistance and at the last minute,” and women from Mali flew themselves to peace talks in 2012. In Afghanistan, she noted, “women have been called ‘pet rocks’ for which the rucksack of peace does not have space.”

She said there was no one solution but suggested some “creative mechanisms” to increase women’s participation like the “the ecosystem approach. Let’s not place all of women’s participation in one basket. Let’s deploy resources across the board so that ‘participation’ is not one woman who has all the expectations upon her.” She also advised setting quotas and strengthening accountability to the commitments of the WPS agenda.

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, critiqued what he called a “narrow perspective of making peace,” where mediators feel that human rights concerns can complicate reaching peace settlements and should therefore be put off until after the peace is struck. To the contrary, he said, “we know that justice at least sometimes is a deterrent for the kinds of atrocities that fuel and perpetuate conflict. We’ve seen this in many cases where leaders go out of their way to avoid the possibility of justice and fight tooth and nail to prevent this from happening. Even though I would never say that international justice will always work as a deterrent, if you nonetheless can stop an occasional genocide, mass atrocity, that’s worth doing in and of itself.”

On the need for including women in peace processes, he warned against tokenism or, as he put it, taking “the Margaret Thatcher approach. I don’t believe having a woman in the room magically makes things better, but in Afghanistan where a key issue is will the Taliban re-impose gender discriminatory policies, how you can decide the future without women in the room is just crazy.”

Jake Sherman, Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, moderated the discussion.

Live coverage of the event in French can be found on the IPI Francophone page.

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IPI held a policy forum on November 7th on the evolution of the strategic partnership between the United Nations and the African Union, with a specific focus on how they undertake conflict prevention and crisis management efforts. Organized with the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the African Union Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations, and the Training for Peace Programme, the forum also served to launch a research report on the subject produced jointly by IPI and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

Co-authored by IPI Policy Analyst Daniel Forti and ISS Researcher Priyal Singh, the report looks at the partnership at the member state level in the UN Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council, as well as at the operational level between various UN and AU entities. It also assesses the partnership across several thematic issues, including the AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative;  mediation; women, peace, and security; electoral support; peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and development, and youth, peace, and security. The report offers six recommendations for the UN, the AU and their member states to strengthen the partnership.

Bintou Keita, Assistant Secretary-General for Africa, UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, identified the reasons why conflict keeps reemerging across Africa as “exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination” and said the most effective response was through partnerships. She noted approvingly that at the political and policy making level, the word that most recurred was “joint” as in “joint visit, joint communiques that is becoming more common.”

Jerry Matthews Matjila, the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the UN, and Odd-Inge Kvalheim, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway, made opening remarks, with Ambassador Kvalheim praising the report as “a valuable tool for understanding the relationship between the UN and AU to guide their efforts and also to point out where support from others is needed” and Ambassador Matjila talking about the October 2019 South African presidency of the Security Council during which the three African members of the Council (A3)—South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, and the Côte d’ Ivoire—acted in concert and coordination. “The A3 in 10 months had 13 common statements, you never had that before,” he said. “The A3 became like something you have to cross on African issues. Why? Because they were united.” Reflecting this assertiveness, South Africa hosted the 13th Joint Annual Consultative visit between the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council during its Council presidency.

Underscoring the need for effective partnership between the UN and the AU, Mr. Forti noted that the report’s focus comes at a time “when conflict prevention is a priority for both organizations, but neither has the political, financial, and operational tools to prevent conflicts or manage crises on their own.” He said while the two councils are increasingly interdependent, they are defined by “an overriding tension” because their relationship is “fundamentally unequal in terms of powers, authority, resources, and political status.”

Describing the complementary strengths of the UN and AU in conflict prevention and crisis management, he said, “The AU often has more legitimacy to engage national actors, including governments, and can therefore access more political entry points to engage on a crisis before or when it emerges. With its global mandate for international peace and security and its diverse field presences, the UN has more operational and logistical capabilities and a larger, more predictable budget. These comparative advantages can color how day-to-day interactions unfold.”

Mr. Forti said these dynamics can also force the two institutions into what he called “a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, the UN may defer to the AU because of its push for political ownership and leadership while on the other hand, the AU may defer to the UN due to its greater resources, capacities, and in-country presences.”

Like the relationship between the two councils, the partnership between the UN Secretariat and AU Commission remains a “work in progress, but has grown considerably in recent years” Mr. Forti said. There are important formal mechanisms for engagements, but “in reality, the UN and AU depends just as much on day-to-day collaboration, both in headquarters and in the field.”

Mr. Singh highlighted three of the thematic areas that are priorities for the partnership. The AU’s Silencing the Guns initiative aims to end all wars by 2020, and has become a beacon for the two organizations in guiding their conflict prevention efforts. The two organizations work closely on the varied mediation efforts in Africa through a range of political and policy instruments. However, “the UN-AU partnership must account for the heterogeneous nature of the various political institutions involved in mediation, as well as these various mandates, capacities, and comparative advantages,” he said.

The women, peace and security (WPS) agenda is potentially another fruitful entry point for joint UN-AU action, but Mr. Singh counseled care in applying it properly.  “While opportunities for more impactful UN-AU engagements on the WPS agenda are plentiful, the challenge again, however, is how well these engagements are coordinated and managed to ensure collective, coherent, strategies and responses to advance this critical agenda,” he said.

Fatima Kyari Mohammed, the AU’s Permanent Observer to the UN, commended the increasing UN-AU collaboration and the growing institutionalization of the partnership, but said there was still more to be done to put it into action effectively. “Implementation is what really matters,” she said. “Post-adoption is where the work starts.”

Elaborating on key points in the report, Ms. Mohammed said it was critical to ensure that cooperation proceeds in a “systematic, protocoled, predictable” manner, that council-to-council cooperation go beyond the annual meeting of the two bodies, and that joint analysis is followed up by joint action.

Citing the UN Charter’s Chapter VIII governing regional arrangements, she asked, “How can we strike a balance between the role of the Security Council in the maintenance of peace and security and the ability of the AU to develop its own capacity and take its own action? We have yet to find a clear answer.”

In closing remarks, Gustavo de Carvalho, Senior Researcher at the ISS, highlighted the importance to the African continent of multilateral institutions like the AU and the UN. “We are in a moment in which it is almost a cliché to say that multilateralism is at stake,” he said. “Many countries mention the idea of being small countries because together they can have more impact. This is why it is important to strengthen these two multilateral institutions.”

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor moderated the discussion.

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Just weeks after the committee named Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as the 2019 laureate IPI hosted Asle Toje, a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, for a conversation about the prize.

Introducing Dr. Toje at the November 6th event, IPI Vice President Adam Lupel recalled that when he spoke at IPI for the first time last year, he said that “it is no exaggeration to say that the Nobel Peace Prize is the most prestigious prize in the world.” Mr. Lupel remarked, “It must also be added that to be on the committee is itself quite a prestigious honor.” Dr. Toje is the youngest member of the five person Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is chosen by the Norwegian parliament.

Dr. Toje began his remarks with a brief background of Alfred Nobel’s life and how he earned the considerable fortune that led him to write what Dr. Toje called “one of the world’s most famous wills and testaments,” therein instituting prizes in physics, physiology, chemistry, literature, and peace.

According to Dr. Nobel’s will, which both Dr. Lupel and Dr. Toje cited in their discussion, the prize for peace is to be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

Dr. Toje explained that since the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, there has been an ongoing debate about how to interpret the relatively brief and broadly general language in the criteria for the peace prize. While Alfred Nobel could not have conceived of the relevance of climate change or human rights in his lifetime, Dr. Toje explained that the Nobel Committee has adopted a “dynamic interpretation” to account for the importance of modern day issues.

The committee’s interpretation and application of Dr. Nobel’s will and testament is evident in the way that the selection of laureates has reflected contemporary priorities over the past century. Dr. Toje pointed out that after the first World War, the selection of winners centered around the League of Nations. Then, after World War II, “no issue was given more focus than nuclear disarmament.” More recently, the committee has focused on such issues as women’s rights, human rights, and climate change.

Regarding those who claim to have been nominated for the prize, Dr. Toje said that while the committee “will not speak against” such claims, the list of nominees remains confidential for 50 years, and the committee is bound to secrecy until lists are released. Still, he explained that every year, the committee receives questions from people claiming to have been nominated, asking if there is a diploma or a consolation prize. “Sadly,” Dr. Toje explained, “ we don’t we don’t give any runner-up medals.”

When asked about the relevance and diversity of the prize winners, Dr. Toje explained that the committee tries not to judge “different actors by different standards.” He elaborated, saying, “There is a tendency, at least in Europe, to be a bit cavalier about developments in Africa.” To Dr. Toje, this indicates that “we need to check development in Africa and in the Middle East,” where many of the world’s conflicts exist, and “if that means that we just have to really read up on the politics and the religious affairs of countries that we know little about before we start the process, so be it.”

Dr. Toje also addressed the relevance of international institutions in the future of promoting peace, admitting, “We’re facing a global challenge unlike anything we have seen in the past.” He believes that there is still a great deal of work to be done, and stated “I do believe that the United Nations will have a core role to play in this.” Though power balances and dynamics are shifting around the world, Dr. Toje pointed out that the UN has successfully overcome such challenges in the past and will continue to do so in the future. “I do believe that international institutions and multilateral cooperation is the path forward.”

Though much of the discussion focused on the history of the prize, Dr. Lupel asked Dr. Toje to place himself in the future, posing the question “When you look back on the Nobel Peace Prizes of this period, what do you hope to see?” Dr. Toje said he would hope that the Nobel Committee continues to “take its job seriously.” He continued, “We have this opportunity, once a year, to shine the light of global attention at one single issue, so we must choose carefully.”

In answering questions about the impact of the prize, Dr. Toje said the Nobel Peace Prize is always controversial. “There are always some people who feel that this laureate was the wrong one,” he admitted, highlighting that when Kailash Satyarthi was named a laureate in 2014, his award was not well-received within his own Brahmin community. Sharing further examples of controversial laureates, Dr. Toje remarked that Barack Obama’s award remains “deeply controversial,” and that while the selections of Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa received criticism at the time, they are looked back on as “among sort of the stellar moments of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

However, Dr. Toje added, “Once the announcement has been made, we realize it lives its own life,” alluding to the intensity of public reactions. “If the Nobel Peace Prize didn’t spark outrage and strong emotions, well, we wouldn’t be living up to our reputation.”

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Diverse police forces that reflect the populations they serve are better prepared to carry out mandates for the prevention, detection and investigation of crime, the protection of persons and property, and the maintenance of public order and safety. As an illustration of that, in United Nations peace operations, women police have been challenging traditional gender roles and embodying a new model for independence, equality, and economic success.

On November 5th, IPI, in partnership with the Government of Canada, Peace Is Loud, and the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the UN Department of Peace Operations, hosted a discussion on experiences of women UN police (UNPOL) officers and how they contribute to implementing the women, peace, and security agenda.

The event began with a clip from the 2015 film A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, which follows three women UNPOL officers in an all-female police unit deployed from Bangladesh to Haiti as UN peacekeepers for one year.

Geeta Gandbhir, the film’s director, showcased the experience of being on patrol with women, and the civilian response to seeing female police in place of male officers. Where people would often “hide” in their camps from the male troops, women and children came outside and followed the women through the camp, sometimes reaching to hold their hands. The women had “immediate rapport” with the community, she said. “This showed us how critical it was to have women on the ground.”

And the experience also had a positive effect on the women officers, she said, adding that it was a “powerful moment” seeing the women “transform.” The women in this unit came from patriarchal and fairly traditional families and had never enjoyed the independence and freedom of movement they suddenly encountered. Ms. Gandbhir said that one of the Bangladeshi police women told her, “We women go from our father’s house to our husband’s house.” In addition, women had mostly been assigned to desk jobs, and there was no opportunity for them to get field experience. “Some had never been on a plane,” emphasized Ms. Gandbhir, so “for them to travel to Haiti on this mission, alone, was an incredible act of bravery.”

These women also earned new financial security, Ms. Gandbhir explained, making on mission three times what women made in Bangladesh. And because they were able to pay for their children’s education, many women were willing to do additional tours, to be able to support their extended families as well.

Once the women returned home, they became a symbol of hope and emulation. One woman’s five-year-old son “told us that he wanted to be a big shot police officer, like his mother,” said Ms. Gandbhir. “To hear that statement alone told me that what the women were doing was smashing patriarchy and bringing equity and equality in both places where they existed—at home and abroad.”

Currently, of the 9,353 police personnel serving in 23 UN peace operations, 1,420 are women police officers. Luis Carrilho, a UN Police Adviser in Haiti who was featured in the documentary, told the IPI audience that gender parity was a “top priority” for UNPOL, and spoke about the UN’s efforts to make the police recruitment process more accessible. “Our strategy has goals in a very measured way,” said Mr. Carrilho. Regardless of whether the police troops were men or women, he reported, “The priority is always for us to fulfill the mission on the ground.”

Mr. Carrilho enumerated four initiatives that aimed to increase women’s participation in UN policing. The first, he said, was putting in place female role models, and gave the example of the female police peacekeeper of the year award. The next was creating a female senior police leadership roster which countries could draw on to place women in key positions. Third, he said, was developing a senior female police commanders course to better prepare female police to hold positions at the highest level. Finally, he added, was increasing the number of women involved in the selection process for peacekeeping.

Paula Dionne, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, emphasized how “it is not enough to simply increase the number of females deployed. Rather, it is crucial to place them in key positions where the true value of what they do in conflict-torn states and countries can be realized.”

Policing and gender considerations have significantly changed in the past few decades, Ms. Dionne continued, citing her 33 years of experience. When she started, Ms. Dionne said, she had to wear a different uniform from the men and was “expected to take on pink jobs, as opposed to the tougher jobs.” Women, she said, had to “break down the barrier to our right to be part of specialized teams which were usually filled by males.”

Ms. Dionne concluded that “we have certainly come a long way in recognizing the value female police officers bring to peace and security, but there is more that can be done.” Necessary, for example, were “including a feminine voice in recruitment posters, a ‘she’ alongside the ‘he,’” attitude, which would entail adding photos of female officers to the material, and including female presenters at training sessions, which, “while seemingly small, goes a long way in encouraging female participation.”

Nirupam Dev Nath, Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the UN, said that the film “speaks volumes of the rewarding experiences” that, he said, “have long-term impact, not only in the host countries our women police officers serve in, but also globally, and back to their own country.”

Mr. Dev Nath pointed to the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, and how that was the first year that individual police officers from Bangladesh were sent to East Timor. Ten years later in 2010, the all-female police unit was sent to Haiti. Right now, he added, out of 700 police officers who are serving under the UN umbrella, almost 24 percent of them are women, which he hailed as a significant accomplishment.

The biggest challenges to deploying women peacekeepers, Mr. Dev Nath said, ranged from pre-deployment training down to including the family members in the decision making. In fact, he added, women’s participation in peacekeeping was felt deeply by the community; he called it an “inclusive journey” that bore “real fruit.”

Unaisi Vuniwaqa, Police Commissioner for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), spoke on challenges to recruiting women for peacekeeping police, from her own experience. Access to opportunity, Ms. Vuniwaqa said, is “very key.” Prior experience, she argued, “will greatly help them when they come into the mission to be able to deliver at the highest level, whether it’s police commissioner or deputy police commissioner.” Without such exposure, said Ms. Vuniwaqa, it would limit being able to come into the mission and getting the opportunity to serve at a higher level. Additionally, she said, what was needed was more confidence in leaders who recruit and deploy police women, so that women are able to take on equal responsibility before they embark on the mission.

Ms. Vuniwaqa shared her personal experience of persisting in finding a place. “I had to try about three or four times to be able to get into the professional position in the police division,” she said. “I continued to look at myself in every attempt that I made and how best I could be able to package my CV and my experiences.”

Ms. Vuniwaqa attributed her ultimate success to a course benefiting female officers for UNPOL. This course, she said, helped her to prepare for further interviews that she was able to get through. As a result, she tried to replicate this course for recruitment in the South Sudan mission, “to assist our female officers to prepare the forms that they’re supposed to submit to a police division before they can then be listed for the interview.”

One of the telling stories from women police in her mission, concluded Ms. Vuniwaqa, was how they recently appointed two female officers for the position of POC coordinators. They are in charge of this protection of a civilian site in South Sudan that has about 30,000+ IDPs. “And since we put in these two female officers, they have been doing a great job,” she said. And “of course,” she added, “they can do just as well as their male counterparts.”

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United Nations peace operations often operate in complex theaters where a wide array of actors are also deployed by specific member states or regional organizations to effectively address peace and security challenges, and on November 4th, IPI and the French Ministry of Armed Forces held a policy forum to explore peacekeeping partnerships.

The event featured two panel discussions and launched two IPI publications, Partners and Competitors: Forces Operating in Parallel to UN Peace Operations by IPI Senior Fellow Alexandra Novosseloff and Lisa Sharland, Head of the International Program  of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), and Lessons for “Partnership Peacekeeping” from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) by Paul D. Williams, Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

Jake Sherman, Director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, opened the morning-long discussion by noting that six UN operations are now fielded in partnerships with regional, subregional, and other non-UN forces, and he suggested this pattern presaged upcoming deployments. “Regional and subregional bodies are increasingly authorized by the UN Security Council to take on roles for which the UN peacekeeping forces are ill-suited,” he said. “Parallel forces will be an essential aspect of planning and deploying all UN peacekeeping in the future.”

Laure Bansept of France’s Ministry of the Armies said there had been around 40 such coalition deployments since the end of the Cold War and that they were “helpful in situations where the UN lacks the capacity or skills to work in certain sensitive contexts” and allowed the UN to “focus on its mandates.” Referencing France’s support for African-led peace operations, she said these partnerships proved essential “when humanitarian situations rapidly deteriorate and threaten the stability of a region, and no other organization can address it as immediately.”

IPI Research Fellow Namie Di Razza said that regional organizations “offer what UN peace operations don’t have—they have different entry points and different resources and capacities.” Citing her experience researching the case of Mali, she warned, however, that while all actors pursue the same objective in different ways, they also risk “confusion, conflation with peacekeeping operations, and duplication.” She suggested there should be “a clear division between forces.”

Ms. Sharland listed three “rationales” for deploying parallel forces:

• Where there is a humanitarian imperative, and immediate action is necessary, they can respond more rapidly and robustly than a UN force.
• Since parallel forces can be more advanced militarily, they can overcome reservations about the capability of UN peace operations.
• They can serve national interests and intervene to protect their own nationals.

She also listed four “classifications” of parallel forces:  military stabilization, crisis response, insurance or deterrence, and capacity building, and three different types of actors: bilateral, multinational, and regional organizations.  “No two parallel forces are the same,” she said, “so while we can draw some broad lessons, we must be conscious of each unique context.”

Her co-author, Dr. Novosseloff, addressed some of the challenges these parallel force partnerships pose. “UN and parallel forces may have different motivations and goals, and this impacts the way they work on the ground and also their effectiveness,” she said. “The lack of mutual understanding and communication at the strategic level can be more damaging than we think. The divisions of labor that should be at the heart of the deployments are not clear enough.”

She said that central to these concerns was “the impartiality of UN peace operations and how partners can work with non-UN forces that may have different objectives. It impacts the perception of local populations so the impartiality of the UN will be at stake.” Such a lack of distinction, she said, could be exploited by “those seeking to undermine the peace or the process by going after the UN.” And potential mission overlap raised the danger of UN forces being “dragged into situations for which they are not equipped.” Airing these objections, Dr. Novosseloff said, should not be seen as minimizing the positive elements of parallel deployments, “such as additional niche capacities, military robustness, and political support. But the various stakeholders have to make stronger efforts to make them less of competitors and more genuine partners.”

The report makes a series of specific recommendations, but in general, Dr. Nosovoleff concluded, it represented a “plea for a stronger cooperation between all stakeholders involved in crisis management because all the money spent comes from the same pockets, and there needs to be a greater accountability.”

Col. Richard Decombe, Defense Mission of the Permanent Mission of France to the UN, said that while there remained room for improvement in how parallel forces operate, “it’s already an achievement.” Detailing the work of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), he explained how a coordinating forum involving five different partners (MINUSMA, Barkhane, G5 Sahel Joint Force, Malian Armed Forces, and EU training mission) met every two months. “What is in place is quite good, in terms of coordination and communication so the partners are at least informed on what the others are doing,” he said. What they can do better, he said, was having a stronger focus on building up the capacity of local security forces.

Naomi Miyashita, Senior Political Affairs Officer, UN Department of Peace Operations, said that parallel forces were of great value to the UN, which typically confronts situations with a dense web of competing regional and international interests and no clear path to a comprehensive political solution. “Parallel operations shape the space that others have for alternative approaches,” she said.

Self-criticism was essential, she added. “We must be constantly asking ourselves what the progression of the conflict has been and be constantly critically evaluating whether our interventions are having the desired effect and whether stability in itself is a good enough long term objective. We need to be clear about where we add value and where we have strength and comparative advantage. For the UN, it’s its political role, support for political processes and ability to protect civilians.”

The second panel of the morning provided an opportunity to discuss Paul D. William’s IPI report on Lessons for “Partnership Peacekeeping” from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The report describes AMISOM as the AU’s “longest, largest, most expensive and deadliest” peace operation and says that for the UN it is “the most profound experiment not only with providing logistical support in a war zone, but also with partnering on the political front.” Dr. Williams described AMISOM as “probably the most complicated model for any modern peace operation we’ve ever seen,” a model, he said, that “evolved in response to a series of crises and in an ad hoc manner.” As a consequence, he said, the AMISOM model is “not one that screams out for replication, but there are a lot positive things we can draw from it.”

Since AMISOM reflected “the primacy of politics”, the fraught state of politics in Somalia, a country with no state authority for decades, has prevented the mission from becoming effective, he said. “AMISOM has been unable to deliver a peace dividend because the Somali government did not come in behind it and support it.”

In Dr. Williams’ account, AMISOM was less nimble than its principle adversary, the Islamist militant group al-Shabab, and the conflict became “cat and mouse”, with the government regularly “displacing” al-Shabab but “not destroying its capabilities.” The result was starkly counter-productive, he said. “Extending state authority and consolidating it in a place where the central government is not universally accepted as legitimate is not peacebuilding, it’s actually conflict-provoking.”

AMISOM has also failed to stabilize the polarized society, attract local support, shape an exit strategy, or design what kind of government structure it should leave behind, he said. “At a fundamental level, there are real limits to what a peace operation can achieve when the local actors do not want to see the issue reconciled and resolved. Until the parties in Somalia reconcile, AMISOM will be stuck holding the line and not generating the means for its successful exit.”

Rick Martin, Director of the Division for Special Activities in the UN Department of Operational Support, acknowledged that the situation in which AMISOM is working is “very complex.” But he said there were lessons to be learned, principally that “a partnership of the sort we have in Somalia needs to start at the strategic level—it has to be built on planning, as a contingency for further cooperation, and focus on building capacities between the two organizations. ”He agreed with Dr. Williams that the AMISOM model should not be replicated but conceded that “something similar is likely to evolve again in the future.”

Alhaji Sarjoh Bah, Chief Advisor on Peace, Security, and Governance, AU Permanent Mission to the UN, said that the UN mission in Somalia compared favorably to the UN mission in Afghanistan. It illustrated, he said, the particular challenges that Africa presented. “The AU talks about peace operations, not peacekeeping. Peacekeeping is driven by consent, impartiality, but our peace operations range from peacekeeping to open warfare and counter insurgency. When we went into Somalia, there was a clearly identifiable enemy, so in the views of al-Shabab, we were ‘legitimate targets.’ We haven’t been deterred by the absence of peace to keep. We have gone in, created peace, and then maintained the peace, as in Somalia and Liberia.”

Among the lessons he said were learned from the mission in Somalia were that from the outset, there has to be a “political strategy” and “planning” for a subsequent “multi-dimensional phase,” and neighboring states must be “involved and committed.”

Chloé Marnay-Baszanger, Chief of the Peace Mission Section of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), said that “we are witnessing a reconfiguration of how the international community responds to conflict, and Somalia has been a good example of how to think through our processes. If the UN is not the primary vehicle for leading international intervention, then how can we make sure that human rights are still a priority in crisis response?”

She said that Somalia presented a distinct problem because there was no Protection of Civilians (POC) mandate to AMISOM. In its absence, she said, “what we managed to do through the human rights due diligence policy, we managed to strike a conversation about how we reduce the likeliness of violence against civilians in the context of complex violence.” She said that the most important lesson that the Somalia and the G5 Sahel experiences taught was “going forward, we put mechanisms in place so that from the beginning, we don’t have to course-correct.”

Dr. Di Razza moderated the first discussion on parallel forces, and Mr. Sherman the second on lessons from AMISOM.

Figure 1. Past and current parallel forces around the world (Click for full graphic)

Figure 2. Timeline of parallel force and their type (Click for full graphic)

Since the end of the Cold War, the UN Security Council has authorized or recognized the deployment of more than forty parallel forces that operate alongside UN peace operations. As the Security Council has deployed peace operations in increasingly non-permissive environments, the division of labor between UN missions and these parallel forces has blurred, and their goals have sometimes come into conflict. This raises the question of whether they are partners or competitors.

This report examines the missions that have operated in parallel to UN peace operations to identify how to strengthen these partnerships in the future. It analyzes and categorizes the types of parallel forces that have been deployed and examines the rationales for deploying them. It also looks at strategic and operational challenges, including the challenges unique to peace operations operating alongside a counterterrorism force. Finally, drawing on lessons from past and current parallel deployments, it offers recommendations for member states, the Security Council, and the UN Secretariat. These include:

• Strengthening coordination of assessments, planning, and application of UN standards: The UN and actors deploying parallel forces should conduct joint assessments and planning when deploying or reconfiguring missions. The UN Security Council should also engage more regularly with parallel forces and encourage the continued development of human rights compliance frameworks for them.
• Clarifying roles, responsibilities, and areas of operation: Peace operations and parallel forces should clearly delineate their responsibilities and areas of operation, assess the risks of collocating, and improve strategic communications with the local population. The Security Council should also continue to put in place mechanisms to strengthen the accountability of parallel forces, especially when peace operations are providing support that could contribute to counterterrorism operations.

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The United Nations agendas for Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and for Protection of Civilians (POC) both deal with protecting vulnerable populations. The comparison of these two agendas and opportunities to enhance protection were the focus of a November 1st IPI-Canada roundtable discussion, held under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution.

Discussants expressed concern that protection of women from sexual violence has been prioritized over other forms of gendered violence, such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, sexual violence against men and LGBTQ communities, trafficking, and domestic violence. One reason, agreed participants, is that gender-based violence is chronically underfunded. In addition, women are often appointed as gender experts solely because of their sex.

The experts lamented the fact that women tend to be seen only as victims of violence and not as agents of protection from violence. To overcome this barrier, speakers highlighted the need for more female uniformed and civilian personnel on the ground in peacekeeping missions with POC mandates and involved in developing POC strategy. Even so, they noted, women’s participation is often treated with a tokenistic, “tick the box” approach.

In order to insure that peacekeeping missions better and more safely engage communities, especially with women, participants agreed that accountability measures in peacekeeping should be strengthened, and that it was necessary to embrace a wider understanding of “protection.” One way to do this, they said, was to frame accountability around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, since UN member state governments have made public commitments to concrete goals and indicators and to carry out certain gender-sensitive measures of protection.

To truly mainstream these concepts, discussants suggested it would be useful to conduct local analysis in conflict communities and examine intercommunal conflicts. Speakers said that the strategic integration points of the WPS and POC agendas were climate change, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The second session of the workshop focused on research questions. Participants pointed out that gender considerations are often an afterthought in peace operations, and explored ways to implement POC that do not reinforce the stereotype of women as victims. They pointed out programs that have been working well and recommended monitoring and scaling up these efforts.

One question that arose was whether domestic violence should be addressed in POC mandates. Discussants argued that intimate partner violence is not unrelated to conflict, and that it must be included in gender-based violence analysis and action. However, doubts were raised as to whether military and police personnel, who are the primary actors in peacekeeping, were the right people to address this intimate type of violence.

Finally, participants discussed how best to incorporate male victims in protection peacekeeping mandates and pointed out that because of patriarchal systems of power, the threats men and boys face are under-reported and protection of men and boys receives less attention. Discussants highlighted the fact that “gender” is not specific to women and that to say, “we need more women in peace operations to carry out the WPS agenda” takes the onus off of men to implement the WPS agenda and reinforces the stereotype of women as victims and men as perpetrators of violence.

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The international community’s role in supporting women as vital stakeholders in an inclusive and enduring peace in Afghanistan was the subject of an October 30th IPI policy forum cosponsored by Cordaid, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and the NYU Center for Global Affairs.

Rina Amiri, Senior Fellow at the NYU center and longtime expert on peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, said that while the world’s weariness with the ongoing Afghan war was speeding up people’s eagerness to come up with a way to end it, it was also resulting in concessions being made on earlier promises of inclusion. “Women’s rights and inclusion has moved from an absolute priority of the international community to something that is relegated just to inter-Afghan talks,” she said.

In light of this, she asked, “What are the arguments that we need to make that we’re not making, how can we move from lip service to genuine commitment, what are the ways that we should be thinking about inclusion and process design?”

IPI Senior Fellow Sarah Taylor spoke of a disturbing discordance between the pledges of UN member states to the women, peace and security agenda that she heard voiced in the Security Council debate on the subject the day before and the reality that women are still being kept from positions of power and influence 19 years after the passage of the landmark resolution 1325. She alluded to the example of the work done in Sudan by women “putting their bodies on the line, breaking curfews, braving tear gas yet still excluded from the discussions that determine the future of their communities.”

Storai Tapesh, Deputy Executive Director, Afghan Women’s Network, said that recent peace negotiations between the Taliban and the United States in the Qatari capital Doha allowed for more women’s participation than in past talks but still did not attract the necessary support from the international community. “We saw the added value of women during the recent dialogues in Doha,” she said. “It was us, the women of Afghanistan, who were putting important issues on the table. As opposed to the men, we were not negotiating out of a position of self-interest but pushing the real issues such as human rights, the red lines of the constitution and the need for an immediate ceasefire.”

Though those talks have now stalled, Ms. Tapesh said the women of Afghanistan are still “very much committed” to them and want to see them resumed and “facilitated” by the international community. Clarifying the kind of support they needed, she said, “Afghan women do not want you to fight our battles; we need support for our voices and space to advocate for peace.”

Testifying to the importance of women’s inclusion to the sustainability of peace processes, Karen Pierce, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, said, “You cannot actually build a truly prosperous society that enables any country to realize its full potential if you exclude some 50% of the population from the economic and legal life of the country, never mind the social. More than half of all peace processes collapse within five years if they don’t have sustainable provisions, and those sustainable provisions have been shown in well-documented evidence to include gender and women’s provisions.”

Ambassador Pierce was asked by the discussion moderator, Jake Sherman, director of IPI’s Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, about how to balance the push for women’s rights with the overall push for a peace accord without one jeopardizing the other. “You must have some very robust clauses about human rights and women’s rights, but I don’t know if in a negotiation with an informal organization such as the Taliban, it is good to go in loudly with your red lines,” she said. Instead, she explained, “the point at which you ask for the things you really need is at the end when peace is in sight.” Signaling the critical nature of this sequencing, she warned, “When we sacrifice the long term goal for short term expediency, we end up regretting that quickly and find ourselves back at the table negotiating peace again.”

Ms. Pierce acknowledged that it was particularly difficult to introduce the subject of women’s rights into conversations with the Taliban, a group notorious for its overt sexism and violence against women. “But the fact that is a difficult argument isn’t an argument for not making it,” she said. She added that those who counsel taking up the subject only “at the pace that the Taliban want” are ignoring evidence of women’s rights having been brought into the process successfully with tact, good timing and persistence. “You do it incrementally, you do it gradually, but above all, you do it steadily, don’t go backward.”

Mahbouba Seraj, a member of the Afghan Women’s Network, urged the international community to adopt a principled position on Afghanistan without regard to pleasing one side or the other. “Do not worry about the Taliban or Trump, but take a stance because if you don’t do that and stay on the basis of being wishy washy with the Taliban, then they are going to take advantage of that.”

Teresa Whitfield, Director, Policy and Mediation Division, UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said that actions to include women in peace processes had to go beyond the numbers. “We need to normalize the process that women have substantive contributions in peace processes and not just that there are two women at the table,” she said. She asserted that obtaining respect for Afghan women’s rights would require a “creative” approach, given the nature of the Taliban. “The Taliban doesn’t include women in leadership so we cannot recruit and include them through their political or military power,” she said. Among the alternatives from her office’s experience that she suggested were advisory boards, gender subcommittees, women lawyers, broad consultations with civil society, online platforms, and social media information sharing.

In conclusion, Ms. Whitfield stressed, “The absolutely fundamental need for those of us who represent the international community and are on the outside of conflicts is to put in the legwork, the analysis, the research, the knowledge, and always focus on harnessing international forces. The demand for Afghan women’s rights comes from Afghan women, and that’s what needs to be represented in some shape or form at the table in the peace process.”